Utopia of School, Disobedience, and Translation. Two Biblical Myths in the Interpretation of Erich Fromm and George Steiner

Abstract

It can be assumed that two biblical myths ‒ about Adam and Eve leaving the Garden of Eden and about the builders from Babel ‒ are interesting expressions of the utopian imagination, because these myths narrate about two places where projects of sufficiently perfect social order were implemented in two different ways. At present, the school is one of the places that could be understood as the ambiguous effect of an implemented utopia of the industrial revolution era; the school is an education space designed as an important part of the project of a sufficiently perfect social order. Two original readings of the mentioned biblical myths ‒ by Erich Fromm and George Steiner ‒ shall contribute some new themes and outlooks to the discussion of the condition of the modern school and the discourses of critical pedagogy or the pedagogy of resistance and hermeneutic pedagogy.